Thanksgiving

I’m sitting here in the dark. It’s 10 PM and the electricity has just gone out. I probably have about 10 minutes of battery power on my computer, since the battery is shot. Since I’ve lost my internet connection I figured I’d blog a bit.

We spent this Thanksgiving with Noel and Rachella. We had the day off from school, since it is an American school. We divided up the cooking tasks between the two families and made a feast. Jason, who loves Thanksgiving because it begins his favorite time of year, decided we’d begin our celebration early in the morning with breakfast at the Simons’ house. He went over there with the first load of stuff at 8:30 or so. They don’t have kids, so I was just hoping they were awake! I would’ve been really annoyed if someone as cheerful as Jason is in the morning showed up at my door at 8:30 on our day off of school! While Jason was gone, Luke and I started making my Great-grandmother Riley’s homemade rolls. Luke loves to help in the kitchen! He also loves to taste whatever we’re cooking!

Anyway, Jason made breakfast for us—eggs and biscuits (no bacon—it costs $8 a pound here) with fruit and juice. It was delicious. Then he began cooking the turkey and Noel started on the stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and green bean casserole. Luke stayed at the Simons’ house to help.

Rachella and I came back to our house to finish making the sweet potatoes and homemade rolls. I’d made a peach cobbler for dessert (pecans for pecan pie were $10 a bag!) and Rachella ordered a pumpkin pie from a local bakery. We went back to the Simons’ house around 2:30 and started setting the food out. We sat down to our feast at 3:00. (You may notice we have tons of food, all served in whatever dishes we could find. I find it very dissatisfying that I have lovely serving dishes in storage at home. I never use them at home because I never cook large meals for many people at home. Now that we’re here and have to cater our own holiday meals I am thousands of miles away from those dishes!) Here are the boys all ready to eat.

We ate and then watched Elf to kick off the Christmas season. Rachella fell asleep about ten minutes into the movie. I lasted thirty. Finally I’ve met someone (other than Daddy) with my talent for falling asleep during movies.

We had a great day from start to finish with a few exceptions. Luke passed his tummy bug on to Jason and me. Also, Noel and Rachella have a dog, Dobby, who is absolutely the most terrifying creature you’ve ever seen. See?

Well, Luke thinks so anyway. Dobby let out one loud bark and Luke screamed bloody murder. Poor Dobby got put away in the bedroom for the rest of the day. Luke was also a little bored, even though I brought toys for him. He repeated “I don’t wanna be here!” about 20 times while we were watching Elf. I tried to tell him not to say that because it was rude, but I couldn’t help sympathizing with him. There was also some drama over finding canned onion rings… But all in all, it was a wonderful day.